If there was any way of describing my current experience in this transition from Ibiza to England, I would describe myself as being in a liminal space – these two words have been lodged in my mind for weeks now, helpful language to assign to my situation.
In anthropology, liminality (from the Latin word līmen, meaning “a threshold”) is the quality of ambiguity or disorientation that occurs in the middle stage of rituals, when participants no longer hold their pre-ritual status but have not yet begun the transition to the status they will hold when the ritual is complete. During a ritual’s liminal stage, participants “stand at the threshold” between their previous way of structuring their identity, time, or community, and a new way, which the ritual establishes.
There is the shredding of my previous role, responsibilities, and vocational identity – relinquishing of tasks, email accounts, legal responsibilities…whilst still being engaged in the day to day running of teams, time on the West End…it’s like a static transition within a transition, a leaving before we have left.
During liminal periods of all kinds, social hierarchies may be reversed or temporarily dissolved, continuity of tradition may become uncertain, and future outcomes once taken for granted may be thrown into doubt. The dissolution of order during liminality creates a fluid, malleable situation that enables new institutions and customs to become established.
Eventually, in a few weeks time, all tradition, some relational dynamics and previously held future plans will come to an end. Friendships will continue, but they will be different; rhythms of life shaped around certain people and the context of this particular island will change; and a future we thought we would have will be replaced by a future we have yet to dream.
In some way this liminality is unsettling: trying to work out appropriate responsibilities now, when to emotionally step back, and when to begin focussing more on what is next, are all tricky to balance. And yet I am finding that this malleable situation is increasingly freeing, and like opening a window in a stuffy room, allows the fresh air of thinking and scheming in.
I want to salvage all I can from our time here – all we have learnt, and every way which we have grown. I sometimes sit in a cafe at night, watching the West End in full flow, and journal my thoughts and my experiences. Being in the place where I have spent so much of my time, whilst gathering my thoughts, has been incredibly helpful in processing the last 5 seasons. Again, it is way of internally leaving while we are still actually here.
When I was a dancer, choreographing work, I would ask my dancers to improvise. As they danced, I would sit at the back of the room and watch. They would keep dancing until they happened to do something that just ‘worked’ in the context of the piece I was making. So often I and they knew the feel, style, look, pace, of what I was creating, but the individual steps within that had yet to be discovered. Very rarely did I come with set movements to teach my dancers; I found that the most creative, beautiful, risk-taking, original, and enjoyable dances were made through the careful observation of hours of improvisation. Every so often someone would dance something spectacular – something natural to them, in tune with the music and in line with the piece I had in my mind. I would leap up, shout ‘stop – do that again!’ – and from there, often whole segments of the piece would be formed.
I think following God’s plan for us is a bit like that: He knows the piece He is creating with our lives. We sometimes think that God has designed definite steps and to live obediently means working them out and sticking to them; in that case, liminality is a fearful and anxious place. I like to think that He knows the overall piece He is creating, but that we are to dance freely within the context of what He is making, trusting that when we stumble on something that is right by Him and for us, for that moment, we will hear a divine – ‘stop, do that again!’. If this is in any way true, then liminality is the initial stepping away from what has been formed, into endless possibilities of what could take shape.
Maybe our feelings of liminality, waiting, frustrations around the losing of one chapter and waiting to step into the next, are where God wants us to be in order to shape and free us. Sometimes it takes us so long to stop dancing what we think should be the next steps and start moving freely, that we need a good chunk of liminality to get there. The gracious comfort of remaining threads of what was, and waiting for new threads to be pulled and woven together.
Liminality – the precursor to the complete transition, a place of unfamiliarity and the dissolving of all that was to make way for the creativity and freedom of defining the next few moves of the divine dance we are in.
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